Hollywood’s New Hurrah
As architects say, Hollywood has good bones. Walk along Hollywood Boulevard between Highland and Vine; stroll along Sunset Boulevard, or the nearby side streets and look up, past the cheesy store facades, the boarded-up shops and the trash that swirls against vacant buildings.
The landmarks--including the El Capitan, Pantages, Egyptian and Mann Chinese theaters--are guardians of a time when Hollywood was really the glamour capital of the world. Their ornate spires, decorative brick and ironwork, the neon, the art deco, the Spanish Colonial or Egyptian-motif touches still transcend the grime and decay around them.
Although most of the big studios left Hollywood long ago for Burbank, Culver City or Santa Monica, the tourists still come, about 9 million a year, many from abroad. Once they venture beyond the stars’ footprints in front of the Chinese, they seem dazed by the tawdry souvenir shops and the prostitutes.
Hollywood revitalization has been more dream than reality for a long time. But it can happen. Times Square in New York City, where prostitutes and drug users once reigned, has become a much family-friendlier attraction in recent years, courtesy of heavy tax subsidies. Hollywood can come back, too--and taxpayers here should have to risk far less.
The TrizecHahn Centers, a real estate developer, wants to return movie glamour to Hollywood Boulevard between Highland and Orchid avenues. Its plans call for the usual movie theaters and restaurants--but also as part of the deal, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences would move its awards show to this site, across the street from the Roosevelt Hotel where it handed out the first Oscars in 1929. A broadcast auditorium for the Oscar awards and ballroom space would also be built. Other elements include space for live theater and music and retail shops representing the major movie studios. A Metro stop is already under construction at one corner and a 3,000-car parking garage is in the works. The development could provide the economic boost that Hollywood needs to link the landmarks that remain into something vibrant and enticing.
This project could also be another example of the creative thinking by city officials and business people that marks two other redevelopments--Westwood and the downtown sports arena. Like the Village Center Westwood project, currently moving through the city’s approval process, TrizecHahn’s plans include elements not found in the usual mall--in this case the studio and live performance space and the Oscar show venue. Plans now also call for traffic improvements just north of the project to prevent cars from snarling the narrow, quiet neighborhood streets.
As with the new sports arena, now under construction downtown, city officials wisely want local taxpayers to bear little or no financial risk for the Hollywood project. Plans call for the city to finance $90 million of the project’s $385-million cost; city funds would pay for the parking garage and part of the broadcast theater, both of which the city would own, but be paid back from project revenues.
Learning from the long-running, nasty dispute that stalled the arena, TrizecHahn offered to guarantee that the city’s investment would be repaid. The major dispute has been over how best to structure that, but city negotiators and the developers have now reached agreement on the terms of a tough, prudent guarantee. As the project comes before the full City Council this week, Hollywood could be ready to write a new, brighter chapter in its fabled history. But the city must make available all the documents that spell out the terms of this deal as soon as possible. If city officials have learned one lesson from the arena negotiations it should be that sometimes a developer’s verbal assurances are not borne out in the fine print.
